low cost cooling device for neonatal care

When babies are deprived of oxygen before birth, brain damage and disorders such as cerebral palsy can occur. A common cause of this deficiency is knotting of the umbilical cord, and in developing nations, untrained delivery, anemia, and malnutrition during pregnancy can also contribute to oxygen deprivation. Extended cooling can prevent brain injuries, but this treatment is not always available in developing regions where advanced medical care is scare. Johns Hopkins University undergraduates have devised a low-tech $40 unit to provide protective cooling in the absence of equipment that can cost $12,000. The device, called the Cooling Cure, lowers a newborn's temperature by about 6 degrees F for three days - a treatment that has been shown to protect the child from brain damage if administered shortly after a loss of oxygen has occurred. The device, simply made of a clay pot, plastic-lined basket, sand, instant cold pack powder, and a temperature sensor, is powered by two AA batteries.

repost via: tech briefs tv

Products through the ages - slideshow

3 1/2 minutes, 12 objects, one example for every decade between 1900 and 2010. Newspaper, telephone, pram, one pound, hearing aid, mannequin, milk container, music format, swimsuit, keyboard, jelly mould and alarm clock.

Micro manufacturing robots as a children´s book

Pop-up books are always a fascinating way of making narratives more appealing to children and delight craft-sensitive grown ups with unexpected volumes being unfolded in every turn of the page, but building functional complex robots through this process sounded -at least- far fetched.
This is how bees are born today... Well, just mechanical ones, for now.  Harvard Researchers have develop a process on which a a robot bee, its assembly scaffolding and its support are fabricated as a Printed Circuit MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System) stacking  a group of 18 previously laser cut layers of different materials. In the cut, stacking and organization of these layers lays a surprising secret that rivalry the magic of  Alice in wonderland. (check the video to discover it)
Utterly amazing fabrication and assembly process that, although its complexity, looks simple as a children´s book.

Via: scientificamerican

The history of the world in 100 objects

source. The British Museum

How do we know about our past selves? About 8000 years BC we started to develop clay tokens to enumerate good. This can be said was the first gesture of the symbolic function stem out of our minds as a tool to record and manipulate the complexity of the world on which we were living. The tokens would then evolve into enumerating systems and later into what we know now as writing systems. From that point on we have what we know as history.

Writing is a tool that come from our minds and is meant to be use to shape the intangible realm of -again- the mind. But what happened with the tools we create to shape our environment or even our selves, or those object on which we project our intangible inner existence into the material world? all those stories, all those  evidences are embodied as solid reflections of our selves in different developmental stages and tainted with variant comprehensions of our meanings and perspectives.

This is the stories that a join project between the BBC and the British Museum have to tell delivered in various formats:
As Web site: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/a_history_of_the_world.aspx
As radio show, now as a podcast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/british-museum-objects/
As an interactive web: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/explorerflash/?timeregion=7
And as a book: http://www.britishmuseumshoponline.org/invt/cmc44134/?__utma=1.432636122.1363320116.1363320116.1363322472.2&__utmb=1.5.9.1363322644495&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1363320116.1.1.utmcsr=uclue.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/&__utmv=-&__utmk=132295566

 "Reason is the organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning."

C.S.Lewis

Mechanical beauty

because beauty also matters...
via: gearpatrol

The real sound of wood

Today looking for input for a new project related to musical instruments i found what i think is a big leap forward to give musicians in the search for a personal sound an alternative to electronics. This a MIT student that device a way to sense the specific oscillations of the wood of the guitar. So, if you change the soundboard of the guitar (as you do with the chameleon guitar) you change the sound of it. As an extra, the soundboard becomes a platform for experimentation with different materials like water, oil or whatever you want to put inside the special container under a modified soundboard.

via: http://buildingtheergonomicguitar.com/2009/03/mit-chameleon-guitar.html